Before the story, there was a human life, interconnected with other human lives.A human life lived before and with God.Through him stories were made, and at least some of the stories that came into being came into being in connection with him.In those stories would be life, and that life would be light for human [Read More...]

I’ve occasionally found myself unable to visit my own blog in recent days, sometimes being met with an “operation aborted” message. I’ve looked into it and this seems to be caused by the “Followers” gadget that can be added in the side bar. So please do follow this blog, but until such time as Google [Read More...]

Part Three of Philip Clayton’s Adventures in the Spirit is about Panentheism. Chapter 8 offers an introduction to panentheism and the closely related subject of process thought. A cumulative case is made for why panentheism might be adopted as a theological framework rather than classical theism. Clayton realizes that for some the attractiveness of panentheism [Read More...]

Today marked the second (and final, although I’m not sure anything in my class is really “final”) of my Sunday school classes on Islam. We also touched on a number of key points about Baptist identity, which will make for a nice segue into what happens next: I’m going to take a break from teaching [Read More...]

While the estimate that The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context will be available in July has vanished from the publisher’s catalogue, Amazon.com now lists the date as May 26th! There may only be a few more days to benefit from the pre-order discount Amazon is offering of 33% off. It [Read More...]

“The question of which scriptural teachings are “non-negotiable,” and which bear multiple plausible interpretations, continues to divide the church, as it has ever since Peter and Paul debated the circumcision and dietary laws.” – Marilyn McEntyre, “Dogma and Disagreement”, God’s politics [Read more...]

I am quite sure that the number of people who have a deep desire to be able to read ancient languages on their Pocket PC is small indeed. But the fact that texts that should work are available online might lead one to hope. Yet most of the texts I’ve tried confront major issues. Aramaic [Read More...]

Part Two of Philip Clayton’s book Adventures in the Spirit focuses on a (perhaps the) key concept for Clayton and many others seeking to relate religion and science, traditional theological concepts such as God and the soul on the one hand and data from physics and biology on the other: Emergence. Chapter 4 begins by [Read More...]

In Part One of his book Adventures in the Spirit: God, World, Divine Action, Philip Clayton explores the methods of philosophy and theology. Chapter 1 is entitled “Critical Faith: Theology in the Midst of the Sciences”, and it begins by setting forth the goal of the studies included here, which is “to develop and defend [Read More...]

Today in my Sunday school class we talked about Islam. In recent weeks, we had turned to the subject of how Christians might/should view other religions, and it was felt that those in the class would benefit from learning more about other religions. It is hard, if not impossible, to discuss how one might view [Read More...]

Some excellent reflections on the season 5 finale of LOST have been posted at Entertainment Weekly by Doc Jensen (HT Carmen Andres, who also has posted her own thoughts about the episode). Here’s a sample, which represents his own theory about the significance of certain events: Much of the castaways’ history — including the crash [Read More...]

Let me say it from the outset: this post will discuss last night’s episode, the finale of the penultimate season of LOST. If you don’t want to learn what happens in that episode just yet, or you don’t want answers to some of the questions viewers of that episode were left with, then read no [Read More...]